


A Cat's Craddle

by thecrownofthereveur



Category: The Unusuals
Genre: Brain tumor, Cancer, Family, Friendship, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:46:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecrownofthereveur/pseuds/thecrownofthereveur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dying. That was it, isn’t it? Dying. And dying alone.</p><p>(A retrospective about Eric Delahoy and how he endeed up dealing with his cancer...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cat's Craddle

**Author's Note:**

> So, I finished the Unusuals the last friday, and I had to write something about Delahoy.
> 
> As always I must warn you, English is not my first language.

Delahoy couldn't sleep. It was a normal thing lately. He just couldn’t sleep. Whenever he went to bed, after turn off the lights of all the apartment and close the door lock, he stayed in his bed for a couple of hours, thinking or trying not to. Sometimes he fell sleep after the first half hour, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he thought about all the work that he would have to do the next day. He thought about the paperwork, about the arrests or the witnesses he had to talk with. Yes, he would do that. But just after assuming that he was going to made it by the day of tomorrow. Assuming that he was going to wake up fine, not blind, or deaf or without been able to speak. Just assuming.

He was accustomed to that kind of thought hitting him during the night. Most of them were a bit dramatic. But he couldn’t resist them for some reasons. They were too noisy in his head, too scary. And tonight he didn’t wanted to do the same thing he had done during the last months. Think. He wanted to sleep, to fully rest like a normal person. But he couldn’t.

Delahoy sat on his bed, looking at the closed window in front of him. It was late. The lights of the park in front of the street were all turned off. Besides his bed, there was little nightstand with his phone and some papers. The messages of his doctor were still in the answering machine. He hadn’t even heard them, he didn’t wanted to. But maybe, just maybe, he should. Doesn’t he? At least a call. He took the phone just for a moment, hesitating. He marked the numbers and immediately he pressed the red bottom.  He laughed nervously – he didn’t even knew why, there was no one there to hear him.

‘This is stupid’ he whispered putting the phone down again. He should try to sleep, maybe some pills would help him. He was going to go to the kitchen when he saw the book besides the phone, that one from the missing man some weeks ago. He took it in his hands, opening it carefully. He had read some particular passages many times the last days. He didn't knew why, but he liked especially the beginning.

_Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John…_

_… I was a Christian then. I am a Bokononist now…_

 

 

Delahoy was a lonely man. Not because he had no friends, or because it was difficult for him to speak with people, he just sometimes felt alone. He didn’t had brothers or sisters, neither parents to be with him during holidays or weekends. And it was normal for him, he was accustomed. It was the same with his girlfriends, when he had had them, they were with him for a short time or they weren't at all. And that was normal too, he was a cop after all. His time was short and unstable, like his patience. When he finished his shifts, he usually undressed himself to get under the covers and read or watch TV. Sometimes he went with Leo for supper in the Chinese of the corner, sometimes he just asked for a good drink. In his free time, occasionally he made exercise, but he had never succeeded in making it an habit. Still, he enjoyed taking walks to not think, just putting a foot in front of the other. His walks had become more common and more longs when he found out about the brain tumor.

He hadn’t told anyone about it. Not because he didn’t wanted to, or because he wasn’t scared and anxious to tell it to someone, but because he had more fear for the reaction of his companions. He was afraid of what could they think, he was afraid of their looks of pity, watching him like a dead man walking between them. More than that, he was afraid that they might force him to seek for a treatment. He had already decided that he didn’t want any. The idea of entering to the hospital alone, sitting in gown in a cold gurney was just too much. The idea of the white walls, with all the nurses walking side to side, taking him to the operation room.  The idea of being there unconscious while the doctors shaved his head, while they opened him for put tubs and tweezers and scalpels in his brain. The idea of not waking up, of not being himself again.

 

_…We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing._

_Such a team is called a karass…_

The first time Delahoy noticed it he was at work drinking his mourning coffee. That mourning he had woke up with a horrible migraine in his head that hadn’t allowed him to think straight for some minutes after opening his eyes. Still, he took a cold shower and a he took a pill, hoping he would be fine in a couple of hours. He went straight to the second square unit. The headaches had being happening a few times the last month, but they usually were gone after a good breakfast in the restaurant of the corner. But that day hadn’t being like that. When Delahoy sat in the chairs of the resting room, trying to take a break from the annoying light of his computer, he was still pained, maybe even more. He had figured that maybe a little break would made him feel better, but still he was there, rubbing his temples with his hands and sighing.

‘Eric, are you okay?’ Banks had asked him from across the counter, pouring himself a cup of coffee too. Delahoy had straightened his back immediately.

‘Yeah, I just… I’ve been having some headache lately,’ he had responded pursuing his lip. He really hadn’t wanted to make a big deal about it, but like trying to piss him off, Banks keep asking, ‘Lately? For how long?’

‘I don’t know, for the last two weeks?’ he had said, not wanting to give it importance. It wasn’t important. Then Banks had suggested something about going to see a doctor, just after sip from his cup of coffee. Delahoy had left his own cup in the table, not even wanting a sip. It tasted strange (like meat?). ‘Thanks’, buddy, but I’m not afraid of a little headache,’ Delahoy had said standing up, ‘or from germs…’ he added while watching Banks cleaning his hands with those antibacterials he carried everywhere.

‘Hey, those things kill people!’ Banks had said while he was leaving. Then Delahoy had headed towards his desk, thinking it was better to start with those files pinned in front of his computer.

When the doctor explained it to him, Delahoy had just finished his shift. He was tired, he wanted to rest and take some sleep. Maybe that was why he didn’t say or do anything at the beginning. When he understood he laughed, incredulous. It was a joke obviously, it had to be. But the doctor didn’t laughed with him, he stayed there with that strange expression in his face. Delahoy knew that face, it was the same criminals put in the interrogation room when they didn’t wanted to say it, when they just looked at him and the crime was written in their eyes. Delahoy’s smile faded away quickly, realization hitting him hard. The only word he had managed to say was _fuck_.

He didn’t went again to the hospital after that, no matter how many messages his doctor left in his answering machine. The most close he came to a medical appointment was Monica’s office in the morgue. He remembered very well how they had snitched in the MRI room for make him some tests. The little mischief had ended with Monica been fired from his job. That had been some weeks ago. Delahoy still felt guilty about it. He had like Monica, somehow, he had even brought her flowers the last time they saw each other – and Delahoy wasn’t the type of guy that buy flowers to cute girls. After their night in the hospital he had even starting to imagine how it would be to have a relationship with her. It would probably have being strange. He was a cop. She was a forensic doctor. Still, he could remember her in his underwear, so close to him in that small janitor’s room, reaching for his lips to kiss him. Maybe it had something to do with the brain tumor.

 

_"If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass."_

Near death experiences were something funny, Delahoy though suddenly. He could say so, he didn’t just had cancer, aside from it he had being close to die four times during the last six months. He had stepped in front of the subway while chasing a cat-killer. He had been shot in the head by a fat Chinese in a shitty apartment. He had jumped from a roof to fall into an old woman’s balcony. People will probably say that that was enough bad luck. But God or whatever other entity who controlled Detective Eric Delahoy’s fate disagreed about it. Because that mourning, Eric had been shot for the second time in less than a year. He and Bank’s were chasing a high school boy with a backpack full of his grandmother’s medicines – the same medicines that he was selling in his school and his neighborhood. None of the two cops knew that the boy had a gun. The shoot didn’t hit Delahoy, it passed by his right arm making him just a scratch. Then, when the things calmed down, the surprise made him sat heavily in the sidewalk. The headache in his head was not getting better and he still smelled horses everywhere.

After Bank’s handcuffed the teenager and a police car went by to take him to the second square station, he walked towards Delahoy pointing his index finger to the sky, ‘hey, you are lucky guy, you know? Someone there is watching for you.’

He was smiling, maybe relieved that his partner was okay.

God, Delahoy didn’t knew if he should keep believing in such thing. So then he said it without thinking too much, frowning slightly because of the light of the afternoon.

‘I have a brain tumor.’

Leo didn’t believe him at first. He laughed, telling him he was not going to fall in that trick again. When Delahoy didn’t responded with a little smirk or a sarcastic joke, Bank’s slowly erased the smile from his face. Delahoy just keep looking at him in complete silence.

‘What are you going to do?’ Banks asked hours later, seated in his living room after they arrived at his apartment. Delahoy still found disturbing the transparent furniture. He clenched his hands in one of the arms of the couch. This was a question he had tried very hard to avoid the last six months.

‘What am I suppose to do?’ he briefly responded.

Banks seemed shocked by this answer.

‘What are you suppose to do? Eric, you have cancer!’ he said. ‘Haven’t you gone to a hospital or something?’

Delahoy blinked looking down to his foot and then to his friend again. His mouth was twisted in a strange way, making the left part of his moustache look a little lower than the right one. When he didn’t answered Banks passed a hand trough his hair whispering _Jesus_. ‘Is that why you have been behaving like this?’ he said walking from side to side in the room. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? What were you thinking? I mean…’

Delahoy sighed. He really wasn’t in the mood for this. He didn’t knew why he had told Leo in the first place, it wouldn’t have fixed anything. He would still have cancer. Then why he had felt the sudden need of speak about it?

‘Leo, calm down, man,’ he said rising a languid hand, ‘I just…’

‘No, I’m not going to calm down,’ Leo interrupted him. And Delahoy stayed in silence, surprised by the dejected tone in his partner’s voice. ‘Eric, are you seriously not going to do anything? Do you want to die because of this?’

Die. That was it, isn’t it? _Die_.

‘Yes,’ Delahoy responded, unknowing the reason of such answer, of the so decided tone in his voice while speaking. ‘Yes, I prefer to die because of this than to die slowly in a hospital bed, scared, with my head shaved and without no one, reading a chapter of Cat’s Craddle every night just to forget it at the next morning. And I’m sorry if that bothers you, buddy, but it’s my brain tumor and it’s on me if I want to keep it or not.’

Then there was a brief pause in which none of them made a sound.

Delahoy only digested his words some minutes after he spoke. Now he just couldn’t not look at Leo at his eyes, his eyes frowned in confusion, then in sadness, feeling of rejection. He was total moron.

 

_‘Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass…’                                     A karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free-form as an amoeba._

That night, when Delahoy opened the door to enter in his apartment, he was feeling shitty about himself. He had just treated his best friend like garbage and now he was there in an empty living room, regretting his life’s decisions because he had a fucking brain tumor and no one to help him, to make him think everything was going to be okay, that he was not going to become in a zombie that soon wouldn’t even remember his own name. He was an idiot, a fucking idiot. He wonders suddenly if Walsh has ever made a competition about who was the more selfish jerk in the entire second square. Some days ago he would had beat his wallet that it was Alvarez. But after today Delahoy would probably win the golden trophy.

Delahoy sat on the bed, getting rid his coat and unbuttoning his shirt. He took off his pants letting his head fall in the pillow. He was totally naked besides his underwear and the many tattoos in his body. He had never regretted having them, not even after he joined the police. He liked all of them, somehow – even the one in his lower back that ended in his right buttock. They all had a reason to be, he had one for his childhood’s dead dog, one for his best-mate during his university times, another one for his high school sweetheart. He remembered that when they were in the janitor’s room hiding from the guards, Monica had touched almost all of his tattoos, detailing them even with fascination. He sighed robbing his eyes.

He wanted to call her. But he was sure she wasn’t even going to pick up the phone. Obviously she had her reasons, because of him she was unemployed.

Delahoy turned on the TV, trying not to think too much about it. He was already under the sheets when he realized he wasn’t going to sleep that night, not well at least. He still couldn’t sleep. His mind was anything but drowsy, and he couldn’t get rid of the guilt he felt every time he remembered his conversation with Leo. His words resounded in his head like an eco. _Do you want to die because of this?_

He didn’t, he really didn’t.

Delahoy stood up from his bed, walking to the living room towards the phone. He raised it and he put it in his ear. He had three options. He could call Monica, or at least try it. He could call Leo and apologize for being a dick. Or he could call his doctor and tell him he wanted the treatment. Whatever he would do, it was on him.

He doubted for a moment before press the numbers. Then, he just waited.

_‘Hello, I’m Monica, if you are hearing this I’m probably not at home. Leave your message and I’ll call you. Bye’_

‘No, you won’t’ Delahoy sighed before hang up. He massaged his temple, looking at the phone without knowing what to do. He didn’t want to go to bed feeling like these. But it wasn’t like if he had any other option.

 _Do you want to die because of this?_ Leo’s voice said again. He really doesn’t want to. What could he do then?

Like taking a decision, Delahoy took the phone again and he marked the numbers. He pressed the buttom ‘talk’ not allowing himself to think, and he put the phone in his ear, waiting. When someone answered in the other line Delahoy felt his heart beating faster.

‘Hello?’ a sleepy voice said in the phone.

‘Hello, Doctor, I’m detective Eric Delahoy…’ he responded, feeling his mouth dry. ‘I wanted to ask you if I could drop by his office tomorrow…’

 

_Nowhere does Bokonon warn against a person's trying to discover the limits of his karass. But such investigations are bound to be incomplete._

Hospitals weren’t a good place for Eric. He had never liked them. People there were sick, were suffering and desperate. Doctors prescribed them useless treatments, hospitals took from them big amounts of money but at the end they were still sick, bankrupt and not knowing what to do. That was why Delahoy had always stayed away from such places as infirmaries, clinics and even veterinary clinics. They caused him a bad feeling. But now, after months of silence, he didn’t have other option but to sit there in the waiting room and, well, wait. He glanced over his cell phone a couple of times, nervous, wanting to do something with his hands. At the end he took a long thread of his coat (he had washed it many times, it was old) and he managed to form the most similar thing he could to a cat’s cradle. He couldn’t do it, of course. He wasn’t very good with those things and he was tired. He had given up on coffee some days ago. The sensation of salami juice in his tongue every time he sipped from the cup did not worth being awake. Then, from the corner of his eye Delahoy saw Banks walking down the hallway towards him. He sat on the chair next to Delahoy without a word. At the beginning Eric didn’t quite know what to do, so he said the first thing that appeared in his mind.

‘Hey, man…’ with that low voice he usually tried to not use. Then he added with doubt, ‘thanks’ for, ugh, coming…’

‘Is not a problem,’ Leo just smiled briefly. And he didn’t look at him with pity, or like if he was dying slowly in front of him. He was just smiling. Delahoy felt a twist in his belly. Was he really that alone as he claimed to be?

None of them knew what to say then. It wasn’t like if they were good for words after all. But suddenly Delahoy glanced to his partner’s hands, covered by white glows. He frowned, looking at his friend and finding a surgical mask hanging by his neck. He sighed passing a hand through his hair and mustache. ‘Leo, you really need to see a shrink,’ he said laughing.

‘Stop saying that,’ Leo responded, ‘Only five more months, okay? Then I’ll have 43 and it’s over, I promise.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Delahoy said, not knowing if he was being serious or not. Then the nurse behind the room’s desk called his name, making both the both men glance at her. ‘Mr. Delahoy, it’s your turn.’

Delahoy swallowed then. He stood up from the chair taking his coat with him. ‘Good luck,’ he heard Leo said. He attempted to smile but it probably looked like a disturbing grimace. Then he started to walk towards the office, that one he had left months ago feeling shocked, scared, incredulous. He squeezed then the pocket of his coat with no particular reason. He felt surprised when he put out his hand with that book of Kurt Vonnegut in his hand. He didn’t remember to had put it there. He glanced again at Leo, who was putting the surgical mask in his mouth and looking nervously to the patients’ surrounding him. He glanced at the office, and again to the book in his hands. He had never being a very religious man, (not as Cole at least) and he had never thought that he could become in one. But he had never believed that he was going to have a tumor in his head either. At the end after all, he wishes to think that it is all a God thing. Delahoy opened the door and he disappeared inside the room.

_As Bokonon tells us,_

_anyone who thinks he sees what god is doing is a Fool._

 


End file.
